Description

Josiah McElheny (born 1966) explores representations of time and space through the medium of glass. Some Pictures of the Infinite looks at 15 years of his work and his ongoing investigation of twentieth-century conceptions of infinity and utopia. McElheny combines the methodologies and mathematics of science with the craftsmanship of artisan glassmaking, and translates the imaginings of Jorge Luis Borges, the utopian endeavors of Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart, the futuristic thinking of R. Buckminster Fuller and the sculptural sensuality of Isamu Noguchi into a range of kaleidoscopic scale models for the infinite--most notably in his recent collaboration with a cosmologist on Island Universe, an accurate scale model of the Big Bang. This publication includes a range of essays by artists and critics, including Gregg Bordowitz, Moyra Davey, Zoe Leonard, Amy Sillman and others.